#conwaycastaways2015

Last week, as I mentioned last Wednesday, we were gone on a 4 night cruise to the Bahamas.  We left a day early since we were flying out of Atlanta at the crack of dawn on Monday.  Thankfully the rain was over for the time being, for those of you wondering, we did escape the worst of what our poor state ended up with, no major issues back in Greenville that I know of.

I worried a little that we were being a bit ambitious leaving Myles for the first time overnight, for almost an entire week.  It was just fine.  Sure we thought about him, but for the most part, it felt like we were "just a couple" again.  I think we needed that.  As for the cruise... not the greatest cruise ship experience ever, but we got a great deal, time together, and a lot of sunshine; we can't complain too much.  

The filet tenderloin dinner and Captain's champagne greeting was the best night of food we had.

We had one towel animal the whole trip, room service didn't show up with our breakfast but sent us chocolate covered strawberries as an apology, our waiters didn't really talk to us much and were not too great at their jobs, overall the running of programs/events was a little unorganized,  about half of the evening shows were just terrible (but the good ones were REALLY good!), and the food was just ok.  First world problems indeed.

The stops were fine.  CocoCay was the best.  We packed our snorkel gear and did our own little exploring with that.  I soaked up some sun and Kyle played some beach volleyball with a few other cruisers.  

on the nature trail and Kyle playing volleyball with some other multi-national cruisers; Kyle's shoes make great cup holders in the sand!

The lunch provided by the ship was ribs, chicken and burgers, and pretty darn good.  It never felt overcrowded on the small island because there was plenty of different areas to stop and relax.  That evening we enjoyed a poolside viewing of Pitch Perfect 2 (so good!).

Nassau was interesting.  I loved getting up on my own to catch the beautiful sunrise beside Atlantis, but going into town was another story.  I had several ideas of exactly where I wanted to go but was a little psyched out about how much crime people talk about there being in the city (including tourist areas), so we ended up just going to all of the jewelry shops on Bay street close to the ship.  We followed the shopping guides from the ship and I ended up winning Kyle a men's bracelet during one of the raffles.  We made a quick run through the straw market where we bought souvenirs for Myles (a wooden fighter jet and a biplane made out of old coke cans for his room) and Eliza (next week is her birthday so its a surprise!).

I never found anything my style on the island so went back to the ship and got the simple tanzanite ring that I had my eye on from the beginning, and ridiculously cheap Crown Royal Black to bring back for Kyle and my parents.  The rest of the time we just spent by the pool because we just really didn't feel like going back down just to sit in a bar.  So no conch fritters for me.  

I thought it was pretty awesome that they back the massive ships into the dock!  The view of Nassau was amazing!

That night was a fun midnight buffet and dance party around the pool.  Then the last full day was a day at sea.  We spent most of our time on the pool deck either reading, watching the bellyflop contest, or playing pingpong.  We did end up climbing the rock wall that afternoon.  That evening though, a storm set in and I did not handle the rocking ship so well (at least dinner hadn't been amazing that night...) and eventually got locked out of the room and had to go find Kyle without my shoes or glasses, in the rain, to let me back in.   We ended  up with only about 5 hours of sleep that night because I woke us up way too early to make sure we were ready to get going, then had a 6 hour wait in the Orlando airport (all of the good stuff is before security fyi) before our flight, followed by a 3 hour drive back to Greenville.

The entire trip had its ups and downs, but we definitely loved the all inclusive way to travel to more than one place.  Not having to cook or clean the whole time was amazing.  Definitely not interested in taking a kid on one anytime soon.  In the future we will try to pick a port that we fly directly to, because we never want to have to deal with a city-to-city transfer service again (but we highly recommend Cortrans!).  And really, just a newer ship next time.  We really really did love getting away to reconnect no matter all the details while we were away.  

I am quite convinced that Myles never knew we had been gone until we had been home for almost 24 hours when he finally announced "mommy home", "daddy home".  He had quite the time with my parents as I knew he would!  Now excuse me while I go buy him a toy airplane that he can actually play with.

Later this week, I will share a few more photos from our trip, along with my capsule style wardrobe for how I kept my share of the packed bags to a minimum.